Speed run of Doom 3 on Nightmare skill in 38 segments completed on July 14 2006. Appended into one file and available in 320x240 and 640x480 versions.

Author's comments:
This is a project that has been going on for several months and I even restarted the run from scratch twice because I wasn't satisfied with the result. The planning started back in August 2005 and I guess that the time it took to finish this is a good measurement for how hard it is to speedrun this game on nightmare. This is probably one of the hardest things you can do in any FPS game. When Jérôme "tagh_azog" Bouzillard got his 1:30 run on marine up the goal became to beat that run, with the difference that I would be running on nightmare instead of marine.

There are of course a bunch of differences between a marine run and a nightmare run in style of playing and strategies as well as the choice of shortcuts and time savers.

-First of all, some things that I can't do are rocket/grenade/barrel jumping, a single explosion bring you down to negative health (instant death) when you have full health and armour.
-Many shortcuts that involve taking damage can't be used, the damage system for nightmare makes everything deal a ton of damage and often result in instant death.
-All medkits are removed, only way to restore health is to use health stations or the soul cube.
-You receive the soul cube in level 2 when playing on nightmare, this allow for some new strategies which actually make some parts faster on nightmare, for example the first mini boss Vagary can be killed in around 5 seconds compared to around 20 seconds on marine.
-Your health drops by 5HP every 5 seconds or so till it reaches 25HP, putting you on a very tight leash in terms of HP.
-Many levels are so hard on nightmare so I split many of them into two parts to achieve acceptable times and performance, specially the earlier levels since I have weaker weapons. Don't let my flow fool you, most of the segments required over 200 tries to achieve the end result.
-In most levels there are more enemies than on the other difficulties.

As usual I never forget to mention people who have helped me in my runs in one way or another. This time they go out to Apathy for proving it was possible to run this game in less than 1:45, tagh_azog for his run where I got a lot of inspiration, some thanks go out to rr.ninty/yiff.fierus for tipping me off on the g_showtriggers command. Lastly thanks go out to all the guys in the forum who followed this project from the start and kept me going with their nice comments with how awesome my run was.

They are:
Agopo
Aquashark
Ballofsnow (extra thanks to this guy for technical help regarding the encoding)
Henkie
InsaneB4st4rd
Juncti

Part 1: Mars city introduction.
Not much to say, the name of the level pretty much speak for itself.

Part 2: Mars city underground, part 1.
This is a very long and hard level, which involves some very tricky shortcuts and sequences, therefore I split it into 2 parts. I shoot the civilians on my way to charge the soul cube a little.

Part 3: Mars city underground, part 2.
Time for the fun part. Here it is very important to use the soul cube in the right places, failing to do so will not only cost you precious time but also ammo and health. Thanks to the new shortcut I found in the bridge room one of the harder sequences in this level is bypassed, allowing me to optimise the soul cube usage even more.

Part 4: Mars city revisited.
Here we have the kind of level I like, short, compact and 110% action. As you can probably guess the last 30 seconds are the hardest, lots of marines everywhere. Exiting a level with only 5HP left is not really recommended on nightmare... but what the heck, a little challenge is always good.

Part 5: UAC Administration.
Another level with a fair amount of tricky parts and the first one is right in the beginning. One thing I like is that you don't have to run all the way to the wounded marine to trigger the next mission, this removes one of the imps in the level.

Part 6: Alpha labs sector 1, part 1.
Hmmm, seems like all levels are tricky on nightmare, including this one. The only thing I didn't get quite right is when I try to kill the first imp, for some reason it always takes 2 shots when I record.

Part 7: Alpha labs sector 1, part 2.
The first half of this level was tricky, this one is even worse. The very first marine is responsible for 150 deaths alone.

Part 8: Alpha labs sector 2.
In this level I encounter one of the enemies I fear the most on nightmare, trites. They have everything a speedrunner hate, a bugged hitbox, small size, their attacks can for some weird reason not be dodged and they ALWAYS come in large numbers. Thanks to the awesome damage they deal on nightmare (50HP per hit) I can't do the trite boost near the end to bypass a very annoying trite fight. Don't worry, I found my own way around it and my way is actually faster, trite boost is so the 80's. There was actually some action outside of the game during this level. A hair from my cat got caught just under the laser (yes laser, not optic) sensor on my mouse and almost ruined the run on 1:31, the mouse registered this as a movement and "woops" suddenly turned hard left. In the middle of the run I lift the mouse up and blew the back of it clean while moving, now that's what I call improvising.

Part 9: Alpha labs sector 3.
There are 2 things I'm forced to do in a different way on nightmare in this level. When I encounter the imp crawling in the ceiling there is an invisible wall where it will land. On marine difficulty you can have the machine gun marine to boost you through this wall but on nightmare there is no chance of surviving that boost. After the trite trap I kill a couple of marines then I enter the second trap room in this level. The usual shortcut here is to jump over the fence right away, however, on nightmare a new angle of approach is needed to survive. I did experiment to charge my HP with the soul cube before the jump but it always turned out to be around 3 seconds slower.

Part 10: Alpha labs sector 4, part 1.
This very short segment might seem controversial to many in terms of speedrunning, but I don't give a damn. In this run I strive for perfection, which will require very short segments now and then. The amount of luck needed to perform well during the mere minute of playing is astronomical, just such a thing as the soul cube targeting (you have no control at all over the soul cube when it comes to targeting) the wrong enemy ruins the entire attempt. Some moves may seem weird but there is strategy and research behind each and everyone of them, just before I fire the soul cube the strafing behind the pillar prevent the marines from shooting which give a precious half second to fire the soul cube and change weapon to the shotgun without getting hit a single time.

Part 11: Alpha labs sector 4, part 2.
I could make this part a little longer because the density of enemy hordes is somewhat lower. There are still some pretty tricky sequences in this part. First of all, strafe jumping over the bridges while they are being deployed is not exactly the easiest thing in the world. Second, time every single move so a box won't block my path at bridge number 3. The timing involved everything from killing all enemies with just 1 shot from the shotgun at close range to get across the bridges using max 2 touches on the bridge itself. Lastly, kill Vagary in less than 10 seconds (you won't survive longer than that), I managed to do so in half that time.

Part 12: EnPro facility, part 1.
This is a level that I knew would be really tough, mostly because of all those lost souls you encounter later in the level. Lost souls are very much like trites with the difference that lost souls fly. When I run through "Chamber 1 upper" there's something like 12 lost souls behind me, and it was just pure luck that I managed to make it through that chamber. I also managed to find out how the teleport jump (thanks to tagh_azog for this trick) worked, and that's why you will see a very high jump close to the end. It seems to be a random event, but at that particular time it prevented me from getting hit by a lost soul and die.

Part 13: EnPro facility, part 2.
Spite all the luck manipulation you expect in a segmented run I think the cramped space and amount of enemies justify the improvising in this part (try it yourself and you'll see what I mean). Between the lift and the core exit it is more or less 100% improvising all the way, I have a plan on what I should do but since the enemy movements are so random making a plan on how is just a waste of time. If I'm lucky I can get half of the enemies with the grenades and clear the rest up with the plasma gun. Cleaning up the lost souls is quite important otherwise they will attack me from behind when I try to kill the maggot and imp to open the door back to the core.

Part 14: Communications transfer, part 1.
I'm getting sick of splitting levels in 2, but once again it is necessary for acceptable performance. The part after the chainsaw room is full of backstabs and surprise attacks, teleporting enemies and other annoying stuff.

Part 15: Communications transfer, part 2.
This is the really hard part of this level. Cacodemons cause a new problem since they actually follow you through the entire level, when you have to wait for something or climb a long ladder they will surely catch up and give you hell. I discovered that strafe jumping is even faster when you have berserk, I use this knowledge near the end to zoom past the cacos really fast. I'm starting to run ridiculously low on ammo for all weapons, which can be a problem in the coming levels.

Part 16: Communications, part 1.
This is one of the longest levels in the entire game. For some reason interface panels in this level don't respond properly when I record, therefore you will see me mash the fire button when I use a panel.

Part 17: Communications, part 2.
This part could've been done a few seconds faster, but I need the extra ammo I pick up. I discovered an interesting thing when I timed certain parts of this segment, the elevators don't follow a timed route. What I noticed is that when calling an elevator it can differ with as much as 2-3 seconds before it arrives, and the same about riding the elevator to the next floor. This is most random and with enough tries I believe that you can gain something like 20 seconds on this event alone.

Part 18: Monorail skybridge (Recycling - sector 1).
Man, this was a tough one. I bought myself some iron will and decided to do this level in one go. It took 6 days to crack this one, and the day I beat it I played the level for about 5 hours. This level is very much like Mars city revisited with the difference that this level is about twice as long and have beefier enemies. I shouldn't whine too much, this level brought me more than just sore hands, I discovered that slope jumps work in this game. Some people doubted that I could get below 5 minutes for this level, as you can see I proved them wrong.

Part 19: Recycling - sector 2.
This level is very annoying for two reasons. I have to kill a lot more enemies on nightmare because of the revisiting of several areas, not very fun to run into 10 enemies 5 seconds from the end with low ammo for all weapons and low health. The other thing is that I can't skip the mancubus fight since I can't do any rocket jumps, this add about 22 seconds to the total time.

Part 20: Monorail.
Finally some easier stuff, apart from level 1 this is probably the easiest level in the game. The amount of enemies is not that big and you have lots of powerful weapons at this point to take care of the few commandos. If you wonder why certain enemies seem to be missing its because I do some clever trigger bypassing, preventing some of them from appearing.

Part 21: Delta labs - sector 1, part 1.
Once again it is time for level splitting. I think this is one of the hardest levels in the game when playing on nightmare, and it doesn't get easier when you speedrun. The first part of the level is the foreplay. The second part is the intense combat part. Hordes of lost souls, cacodemons and commandos will be a real pain in the next part.

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